New Kokomo children's counseling center finds large demand for its services

Two weeks later, after an intensive period of renovating and preparing the building, Four County officially opened The Center for Children and Families at 1948 W. Boulevard.

The facility has been up and running now for about a month, and in that short time, the demand for its services has exploded, said C.J. Davis, CEO of Four County, which is based in Logansport.

In just four weeks, the center is already seeing 60 kids who need psychiatric help, and therapists and social workers are providing in-home services to 20 families in the community.

Referrals are pouring in from pediatricians, school counselors, probation officers and social agencies seeking help for kids in need of mental-health services, Davis said.

The phones have been ringing so much they have discussed hiring another worker just to keep up.

There’s also already been talk of adding on to their newly purchased building to increase the clinic’s capacity to see clients, he said.

“After four weeks, if anybody wondered why we’re here, I think the numbers are screaming the answer for us,” Davis said.

Opening a children’s clinic in Howard County has been on Four County’s radar for a while.

For 40 years, the counseling center has provided mental-health services in Cass, Miami, Fulton and Pulaski counties, where it’s a designated Community Mental Health Center.

In the last few years, though, Four County has seen a huge influx of clients driving up from Howard County after struggling to find help locally, Davis said.

At one point, he said, around 500 clients were making the trek from Howard County to clinics located in the four counties it served.

Because of the distance, it was difficult for the centers to provide clients with all the services they needed, like in-home visits and wrap-around services, Davis said.

“We felt like in many ways, people were coming to our clinics outside the county and not really getting the kinds of services they truly deserve, or the kinds of services that we believe have the greatest impact on lives,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense to have folks constantly go to those clinics and then be short changed when it comes to care.”

In the end, Four County decided against opening a full-service facility for the entire population in Kokomo. Instead, it wanted to establish a clinic dedicated to children and adolescents.

Tim Gearhart, vice president of business development at Four County, said there was a simple reason for starting a psychiatric center focused on kids: There simply aren’t enough children’s mental-health services in the county.

“It’s just a capacity issue,” he said. “We’re not here to compete with anybody, we just recognize there’s such a tremendous need that it became a no-brainer to be here.”

On top of that, 90 percent of those with a mental illness show early warning signs as children and adolescents, and starting mental-health treatment at an early age has a much bigger impact than waiting until they’re teenagers or adults, Gearhart said.

Davis said the goal of the clinic is to first meet the need for children’s services in Howard County. To achieve that goal, he said, the facility will expand as much as it needs to.

“The cap on how many kids we’ll see is whatever the demand is,” Davis said. “If we need to add 10 more workers to meet the need, we’ll add 10 more workers.”

The clinic is already bringing on two more social workers to help with case management and in-home visits, he said. That’s on top of the three full-time therapists, a pediatric psychologist, two advance-practice nurses, three home-based staff and the medical director who already work there.

Davis said the ultimate goal of the center is to make it as easy and convenient as possible for kids to access the mental-health services they need. That means trying to get therapists and psychologists into all five school districts in the county to offer services to kids on their own turf.

“A long time ago, people would go to the ivory tower of the clinic and go see the good doctor who is smoking his pipe and the cure happened inside the four walls of his office,” he said. “We don’t believe in that. We provide services where the people are. We go to the people.”

Gearhart said there’s no doubt that there’s a shortage of mental-health services for kids in Kokomo and the county, and The Center for Children and Families is quickly becoming a major resource for children and teens who need help.

But they’re not the only ones trying to get more services into the hands of kids, he said.

Ever since opening, area providers and social agencies have expressed their support of the new clinic, Gearhart said, and indicated they want to work together to meet children’s mental health needs.

“There really is a spirit of collaboration here,” he said. "People are really interested in how we can help fix this issue. In the world of nonprofits, all of our budgets are shrinking and we’re asked to do more with less. So everybody is kind of pooling their resources to help accomplish the same things.”

Davis agreed.

“The entire city of Kokomo has been extremely welcoming,” he said. “When you come in as kind of the new kid on the block, there’s some trepidation about whether people are going to be receptive. It’s refreshing that there’s such a collaborative spirit here.”